As uncompressed video bandwidth increases with the increasing size of video rasters, greater dynamic range, and faster frame rates, uncompressed video bandwidth continues to increase. In addition, media is being consumed by mobile devices across the globe, sometimes having access only to limited bandwidth. Thus there is an increasing need for compute-efficient, high quality video compression. One approach to video compression involves the use of interframe compression, in which certain frames are encoded in a predictive manner from other frames. Such compression schemes are used in video standards such as MPEG-2, in which a video sequence is broken into groups of pictures (GOPs) that include one frame that does not refer to any other frames (intraframe or I frame) and a set of predictive frames that refer to the I frame, and sometimes also to other predictive frames. When all the references remain within a given GOP, the GOP is a Closed GOP.
In response to the need for increased video compression, some compression schemes, notably H.264, broaden the scope of possible references for predictive frames so that they can refer to frames contained within a previous GOP. Such GOPs are called Open GOPs. However, while such schemes generally provide greater compression, certain problems arise when Open GOP bitstreams are cut, such as when consolidating media files or when cutting from one sequence to another during editing.